Domino Records is still on a Sebadoh reissue jag.
After putting together an outstanding reissue package for the band's undisputed classic Sebadoh III album in 2006, complete with a treasure trove of unreleased material, the label is prepping a deluxe edition of The Freed Man, Sebadoh's first record.
Re-mastered, with 52 total tracks on a single disc, The Freed Man also boasts a wealth of tracks that have never seen the light of day and liner notes from both Lou Barlow and Eric Gaffney, the two antagonists who fought and argued over just about everything while putting together ragged, noisy squalls of indie-rock rage and tender, brutally honest ballads that broke a lot of hearts along the way.
In this day and age, it seems almost unbelievable that an album like this has never been properly released on CD, but such is the case with The Freed Man. It was originally released on Homestead Records in 1989 on cassette and vinyl only, which pretty much relegated Sebadoh to the underground.
Visit www.sebadoh.com or www.dominorecordco.us for more details.

The return of Dinosaur Jr.

In other Barlow related news, the original Dinosaur Jr. lineup, with Barlow on bass and the ever-dependable Murph on drums, has unexpectedly reconvened for a new album called Beyond and along with the Iggy Pop and The Stooges reunion, it is undoubtedly the comeback of the year.
If you've never heard J. Mascis' guitar solos, you are missing out. Wild and untamed, Mascis is not a technician; he plays from the heart and his searing solos show it. Unpredictable and full of raw emotion, they shoot straight at the heart, like a tracer missile from cupid's fighter jet.
Goldmine is doggedly tracking down an interview with the Dinosaur Jr. boys, so keep an eye out for it. As for the new record, it is a monster, on par with anything they've ever done, and that includes Where You Been? Check out the opener "Almost Ready," with its powerful melodic current and torn-and-tattered, distorted guitar glory. Great hooks, solidly executed soloing that's in a league with Neil Young (see the Crazy Horse-style, torn-and-frayed rockers "Pick Me Up" and "Back To The Heart") and rhythms that scorch earth make Beyond an amazing return to form, as do slurred, bittersweet reflections on love and loss like the incredible "Crumble." Dinosaur Jr. sounds like its far from extinct on an album that's going to get a lot of votes for record of the year.



 

Warm as a summer evening, with melodies as light as dandelion fuzz and delicate instrumentation that gives off a hazy glow, the music of Los Angeles singer-songwriter Eleni Mandell is a thrift store of nostalgic wanderings.

Taking '40s-style jazz and wrapping it in a blanket of soft, traditional country charm in the vein of Patsy Cline or Tammy Wynette, Mandell's songwriting is most often compared to Tom Waits — without the junkyard percussion, carny fantasies and whiskey-soaked vocals. 2004's Afternoon was an easy-going delight and the follow-up, Miracle Of Five, has arrived.

The scuttlebutt is she's gone in more of a blues direction, but that the vintage atmosphere of the proceedings is supposed to be true to Mandell past sepia-toned efforts. Blessed with a gorgeously weathered, but winsome voice, Mandell's Americana is full of heart and wry observations on love, loneliness, death and regret.

If you get the chance, go out and see Mandell on her May/June North American tour. In June, she'll be heading out with the Great Lake Swimmers. Dates are listed below:

Friday, May 4 - Malibu, Calif., Malibu Performing Arts Center*
Wednesday, May 9, Toronto, Ont., The Mod Club
Thursday, May 31, Kansas City, Mo., Davey's Uptown
Friday, June 1, Minneapolis, Minn., 7th Street Entry
Sunday, June 3, Chicago, Ill., Schubas

* With Erin McKeown and Melissa Ferrick

With Great Lake Swimmers:

Tuesday, June 5, Boston, Mass., Middle East Upstairs
Wednesday, June 6, New York, N.Y., Joe's Pub (Eleni and GLS play separate shows)
Thursday, June 7, Arlington, Va., Iota
Friday, June 8, Philadelphia, Pa., Tin Angel
Saturday, June 9, Pittsburgh, Pa., Garfield Artworks
Sunday, June 10, Chapel Hill, N.C., Local 506
Monday, June 11, Charleston, S.C., The Map Room
Tuesday, June 12, Atlanta, Ga., The 5 Spot
Wednesday, June 13, Birmingham, Ala., Bottletree Cafe
Friday, June 15, Houston, Texas, Walter's on Washington
Saturday, June 16, Austin, Texas, Emo's Lounge (inside)
Sunday, June 17, Dallas, Texas, Bend Studio
Wednesday, June 20, Los Angeles, Calif., Hotel Cafe
Thursday, June 21, San Francisco, Calif., Cafe Du Nord
Saturday, June 23, Seattle, Wash., Tractor Tavern

Swap Meet

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday ... Record sale, record sale, record sale ... and monster trucks.

Ah, if only that were true. Actually, it's records and records only at the self-proclaimed Mother Of All Rock 'N' Swaps on Sunday, May 13, at the University of San Francisco.

Being the mother of all record swaps, it has a lot of hyperbole to live up to, but KUSF, the studio radio station responsible for putting this on, emphatically says it has vinyl galore, CDs, cassette tapes, photos and tons of rock art.

The event takes place at 2130 Fulton, at MacLaren Hall. The early bird with lots to spend can shell out $20 to get in first at 6 a.m. Want to sleep in a bit and get there later? That's cool. It's $3 to get in at 10 a.m. Moms, evidently, get in free, so if you're female and a little short on cash, give some kid a quarter to pretend he or she is your own flesh and blood.

Vendors, this is for you: it's $60 for your first table (admits two people) and $35 for each extra table (admits one each). Tables must be reserved by May 4. Set-up is from 5:30-9 a.m. (staggered times). Confirmations and load-in schedule will be sent out May 4. Organizers ask that you fill out the slip on the back completely and send it back to them.

For more information, call 415-386-KUSF. You might try sending an e-mail to: kusf@usfca.edu, too. They didn't include contact information in the notice we received.

Oh, by the way, the station says bootleg material is not allowed. The reason being, it's ILLEGAL.

In general, commercial radio is crap. I don't think I'm the lone voice crying in the wilderness on this one.

Top 40 radio is a cesspool of shallow self-promoters, marketing dreams and tacky, overly sentimental garbage spewed from the mouths of teenage idiots. And I'm not going to give classic-rock stations a pass either. They've pared down their playlists so tightly that only a few artists get any real airplay at all. And god forbid they dig deeply into any artist's back catalog. The situation has gotten so bad, I can't even listen to it anymore, and it's even made me literally hate acts I used to dig.

My morning commute consists of either sports-talk radio, NPR or, most often, my own CDs. Turns out, it wasn't video that killed the radio star. It was Clear Channel.

That said, there are other outlets. College radio is still adventurous, spinning records by underground artists on the cutting edge of music and exploring a wide variety of genres and cool  ethnic music. And there are other options for, as Iggy Pop calls them, "musical thrill-seekers."

One is satellite radio, which I'm a big proponent of. Little Steven's Underground is, hands down, the best radio show out there. Another is Internet radio, an outlet that, unfortunately, might not survive if a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board actually comes to pass.

What it comes down to is, the move will almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites, such as one of my favorites, Pandora. At least that's the contention of Pandora founder Tim Westergren. In a letter to Pandora users, he writes, "The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn't pay these at all." Now, I'm no Constitutional scholar, and I realize this relates to people, not companies, but wouldn't the Equal Protection Clause prevent this sort of thing?

Anyway, if this is indeed the case, it is grossly unfair, no matter how well-intentioned the decision may be. Perhaps I'm being naive here, but it does seem that at least some thought in the Board's decision was given to getting artists the royalties they deserve. But, if that's the case, why the disproportionate amounts?

"Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception," continues Westergren. "As a former touring musician myself, I'm no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of range of ANY webcaster's business potential."

It seems Web radio people aren't the only ones taking issue with the Board's decision. Even artists are rallying against it. San Diego indie rockers, Truckee Brothers, have taken up for the cause by giving away their single, "Mayday," to Internet radio stations and podcasts for nothing. The wickedly clever part of Truckee Brothers' plan is this: "Mayday" can only be available online because it is illegal for "terrestrial" radio to repeatedly broadcast the word "mayday."

According to the band's Website, "This act of rock philanthropy will circumvent the U.S. Government's royalty hike that covers all music except for direct deals with copyright holders. The rate hike aims to put Internet radio out of business by charging more in royalties than ad revenue could legitimately cover."

Cynics among you might call it a crass publicity stunt, given that Truckee Brothers' new album, Double Happiness (Populuxe) streets May 8. But, to me, that kind of suspicion borders on paranoia.

If you should feel moved to throw your support behind Pandora and other Internet radio stations, visit the Pandora site or go to truckeebrothers.com and sign the petition. As Public Enemy so eloquently put it, "Fight the powers that be!"

(Photos courtesy Truckee Brothers)

Behold the power of Art Brut, one of this decade's great art-punk bands. Deceptively simple and obstinately dumb, but in that clever kind of way that those who don't dig below the surface will never understand, Art Brut — named for French painter Jean Debuffet's definition of outsider art done by mental patients and other social misfits — burst on to the alternative scene in 2005 with Bang Bang Rock & Roll, and its colorful, insanely catchy batch of glib, punchy, three-minute shots of raw energy. Art never sounded so fun.

Kinetic and furiously paced, with squeaky-clean guitars, faux-British vocals and tight rhythms, Bang Bang Rock & Roll was a big hit with critics, and the band's newest release, titled It's A Bit Complicated, promises more of the same. A link to a five-song advance was doled out to the press this week, and from the sound of things, it's just as explosive, if a bit slick, as Bang Bang. "Direct Hit," so far the best track, hits the accelerator and never slows down, the guitars sounding sharp and tough, with shouted backing vocals and painfully hilarious lyrics about a guy who can't pick up girls at the pub.

The cheeky handclaps and dizzying guitar patterns of the hook-filled "Post Smoothing Out" — check that title, it sounds more like "Past Smoothing Out" when you hear the chorus — make it a smart pop exercise, while "Pump Up The Volume" offers stinging sheets of riffs and a " ... break from a kiss to turn up a pop song" in a story about coitus interruptus caused by listening to the radio. "Late Sunday" and the buzz-saw rocker "Nag Nag Nag Nag" follow similar paths, caught up in nests of hooks that come at you straight or in a more roundabout fashion. Either way, Art Brut has that indefinable "it" that makes you want to jump up off the couch and pogo till you snap your achilles.

In the next few days, you have a couple of chances to catch Art Brut in North America. Tonight, the band plays Toronto at the Mod Club, before heading to Chicago on Friday to rock Subterranean and then hitting Los Angeles' famed Troubadour club. Get it while it's hot. Art Brut will be off then till June, when they embark on a headlining tour of the U.K.

Reunions seem to be all the rage these days, but with the Police, Smashing Pumpkins and other big-name acts making up and playing nice together, the under-the-radar returns of the Happy Mondays hasn't gotten much press. But, rest assured, it's big news over the pond.

With the Happy Mondays, tales of brawls, late-night parties and drug binges often overshadowed their head-bobbing music. They had a reputation as a thuggish lot, and on occasion, they brought out the violent side of the late-'80s/early-'90s rave culture.

Formed in 1985 and lumped in with the likes of the Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays burst out of Manchester as an explosion of colorful house music, head-spinning psychedelia, blues and '70s funk and soul. Samples and hip-hop beats got caught up a whirling mass of guitars, groove-tastic bass lines and Shaun Ryder's outrageous lyrical madness — an oddly literate combination of insider drug conversation, sexual come-ons and street lingo that impressed former Factory Records head honcho Tony Wilson so much that he compared him to W.B. Yeats.

Ryder, the notorious bad-boy of Britain's rave scene, has reconvened the Happy Mondays as a trio of himself, and Bez and Gaz Whelan. The band will birth its first album — no title yet as far as I can tell — in 15 years in the coming weeks and perform songs from it at the Coachella Festival in California on April 29. Dogged by legal entanglements and health problems, the Happy Mondays have been dormant for a while, with Ryder focusing on Black Grape, the pysch-disco unit he pieced together after the Happy Mondays, and guesting on the cartoon/hip-hop collective Gorillaz hit "Dare."

There is the little question of "why?" to deal with. It started off a lark, an exercise in writing songs just for the hell of it. Ryder says it took off from there. "It was having the time to do an album," he says in a press release outlining the details of the reunion. "Everybody's been busy just living, doing whatever they have to f**king do in their lives. We got back together in 1999 and we've been doing. We'd never have split up in the first place if it had just been the three members in the band now back then, but the others wanted to so we did."

It might have helped too if the band hadn't been drugging like fiends, as they were reputed to have done back in the day — the dirty-laundry details of which are all over the 1992 album, "Yes Please!" Apparently, the boys are sober as judges now. At least that's the news from their publicists, with Ryder a family man of all things.

"We're all too old for that shit now," explains Ryder. "I have to admit, though, that this is the first time I've ever been out in this business — and I've been in this business since I was 18 — that I've done it straight, not using crack or heroin or whatever. It's f**king terrifying! No, it's great, until you go and do interviews and sit there and not have anything to say."
 
Produced by Sunny Levine, son of former Sly And The Family Stone producer Stewart Levine, the album promises to be a more rock-oriented affair than past Happy Mondays' efforts. Whatever. Their return should be a shock to the system of an alternative-dance culture now ruled by the DFA and LCD Soundsystem.

David Bowie and America have had an uncomfortable relationship over the years. Not so long ago, on 1997's failed techno/jungle experiment Earthling, he wrote a song called "I'm Afraid of Americans," which succinctly expressed Europeans' fear of U.S. military and social aggression in paranoid ambient textures and fearful beats and rhythms.

And then you had Young Americans, another about-face for an artist frequently compared to a chameleon. But as far as I know, Bowie has never changed color. But he has always been up for altering his sound and exploring new genres. With 1974's Young Americans, Bowie adopted blue-eyed soul as his flavor of the month.

While it's not Bowie's best work, Young Americans, not so ironically Bowie's most "American" sounding album, did accomplish two things: it made white soul palatable for the mainstream and its chart success cemented Bowie's place in popular music as a honest-to-goodness superstar. Even the radio at work here at F&W Publications headquarters in little Iola, Wis., plays that soaring title track, with that bleating saxophone solo and gospel-style backing vocals, over the loudspeakers now and then. And of course, the album also featured the robotic funk workout "Fame." Belying the somewhat superficial nature of Bowie's white soul experiment were pointed lyrics about drugs, unhealthy sexual relations and socio-political issues, and that makes Young Americans, if not essential, then pretty damn important.

On June 5, an expanded special edition CD/DVD reissue of Young Americans streets. Done up by Virgin/EMI, It includes a remastered version of the original album, plus three bonus tracks, new audio mixes — overseen by none other than famed producer Tony Visconti — and rare TV clips, including a Bowie performance on the "Dick Cavett Show." One of the bonus tracks is one of my personal Bowie favorites, "John, I'm Only Dancing."

Along with the Young Americans reissue, there'll be more Bowie on the way in the form of yet another greatest hits package. This one spans the Let's Dance, Tonight and Scary Monsters era and is titled The Best Of David Bowie 1980-1987: Sight & Sound. As expected, the first half of the album is fantastic, packed with singles versions of "Let's Dance," the creepy, "Major Tom" revisitation "Ashes To Ashes," "Fashion," "Modern Love" and "China Girl." The 1999 digitally remastered version of "Up The Hill Backwards" is included, along with the film version single edit of "Cat People (Putting Out The Fire)" and Bowie long-forgotten collaboration with the Pat Metheny Group, "This Is Not America."

The DVD sports 15 video clips of Bowie's top '80s cuts, most of them previously mentioned above. Previously unavailable videos for "The Drowned Girl" and "When The Wind Blows" make it a promising collection.

But seriously, do you really need another collection of Bowie's best? Actually, the more I think about it, I might, if only for the DVD. But if you're bored with the assembly line frequency of Bowie greatest hits packages, I don't blame you.

He may mumble incoherently and swear a blue streak. He may have slaughtered "Take Me Out To The Ballgame." And his kids may be a little mouthy.

Still, there's no denying that Ozzy Osbourne remains the high priest of everything heavy metal, and news of a new album rings in my ears as angelic "hosannas" — make that demonic power chords. On May 22, Black Rain is gonna fall, with a deluge of massive riffs no doubt. It's Osbourne's first solo album in six years. To hear samples of tracks from it, fans can log onto http://www.ozzy.com/.

Backed by his touring band, a unit that includes Zakk Wylde on guitar, Mike Bordin on drums and Blasko on bass, Ozzy sounds as heavy as ever, like he's been listening to Slayer or something. The mood is maybe even a tad more gloomy and menacing than past efforts, with songs about drug abuse (something he knows a lot about), human savagery, and environmental cataclysms.

What hits you immediately is Wylde's blizzard of riffs, so powerful and thick that you feel like the floor of heaven is giving way. This isn't a sludgy re-hashing of the Black Sabbath catalog, or a return to the notes-per-nanosecond guitar work of Randy Rhoads years of Diary Of A Madman or Blizzard Of Ozz. This is a whole new beast, one with its head still attached to its shoulders. One that's making spot-on social and political commentary, giving hope to masses of people worn down by violence and evil ("Civilize The Universe") and crushing you with its sheer sonic force of will.

And as big a deal as Black Rain is, news of it gets pushed to the back page by word that Ozzy is making OZZFEST entirely free. You heard right, people. It's free. Ozzy's world tour starts in Moscow, of all places, on May 27 and ends July 6, after which Ozzy will hit North America like a falling anvil. His North American tour begins July 12 in Seattle.

So, what to make of all this? Is this the work of a reputed Satanist, who's been villified by animal rights activists and uptight parents? No, this is the real Ozzy. He's not an ogre. He's not going to recruit your children for the devil's pleasure. If you've ever heard him talk — and contrary to popular belief, he can be coherent — Ozzy is a sweetheart, a Beatles lover at heart who wishes goodwill to everyone. And really, if he loves the Beatles, how dangerous and sinister can he be?

Here's to Ozzy: may your dogs stop defecating on your living room carpet and may Sharon cater to every whim.

Young Galaxy, old souls

Here's a tip on a great new release: Young Galaxy's self-titled debut on the Arts and Crafts label. An amazing album that will be reviewed in a future issue of Goldmine, and is due for release April 24, this is a record of incredible beauty and ambition.

Made specially for lovers of romantic space-pop, Young Galaxy's auspicious first album is the aural equivalent of sleepwalking in a planetarium or an ultra-modern city, and accidently colliding with the person you're meant to spend the rest of your life with. Spacious and sprawling sonic landscapes are the order of the way, giving listeners room to wander about and be transfixed by their depth and variety of textures. The vaporous "The Sun's Coming Up And My Plane Is Going Down" is a marvel of sonic architecture, an affecting meditation on fighting depression and living life to its fullest. And "Searchlight" is one of those great pop songs you can't get out of your head, bittersweet and bouyant, with gorgeous vocals and sweeping instrumentation.

I guarantee you won't be disappointed.